title: Texas Got Tested, Grid Stayed Upright
author: Energy Capital Podcast
contenttype: podcast
publication: Energy Capital Podcast
published: 2026-01-31T11:17:00
sourceurl: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/186240246/6fdfcbf380fb9604620bd9fe7106f9da.mp3
word_count: 6914
Over the past few days, winter storm firm moved across Texas, bringing ice, cold temperatures, and the kind of conditions that used to trigger real concern about grid reliability. Welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast, where we covered the decisions, data, and debates shaping the Texas grid and the energy feature. I'm Joshua Rhodes, and I'm joined today by Matt Bombs. This episode is a reaction roundtable to winter storm firm, and what the grid actually did under stress. Matt and I walk through what happened operationally, where outages occurred and why, and how ERCOT system performance this time compared to past winter events. We focus on what held up, what still needs attention, and where public narratives about risk no longer match the data. We talk about the role of weatherization, forecasting, and resource mix, and why Fern matters as a rural world check on changes made since 2021. Not everything worked perfectly, but this storm offers concrete evidence about what investments and reforms are paying off and which questions remain open. You'll walk away with a clearer, calmer understanding of what winter storm firm tells us about reliability in Texas right now. Let's get into it. Hey Matt, I got cold in Texas again. It happens from time to time. How'd you end up faring? We did just fine. We dripped our faucets, Josh, and we survived the cold weather. How about you? Yeah, same. We just hunkered down for a couple of days, just didn't leave the house. Or we were, it was mostly a nice sleen of it, right? So, yeah, did all right. But the media certainly came and called us a bunch, right? We were busy all weekend with interviews. Yeah, I did about a dozen media interviews leading up into the storm and just after, and back just got off one or two this morning. Yeah, a lot of people were concerned about how the system was going to handle it. Is this another winter storm yeary? Yeah, what kinds of questions are you getting asked? A lot of yuri questions. I sometimes think there is a collective PTSD when it comes to yuri, which is understandable. And I think there is also this intrigue and this genuine interest in energy whenever these winter storms come along. It's always so interesting right to hear the questions that people have because energy is mostly boring for most of the year until this kind of event happens. We'll get into some of this, but some of the things like prices didn't show up, that they were in the day ahead, that were in the real-time market, and it seemed like a lot of people were watching, or got to see what was going to happen. And it was relatively boring. I mean, there's a little bit of tightness and scarcity and things like that happening, but it wasn't a big deal. Yeah, it was kind of like someone put bell peppers in the salsa, not jalapenos this time around. Let's make winter boring again. Well, so take us back to last week. So it's Thursday. It's like 70 degrees outside. It doesn't feel like a winter storm has come here, but Urkot starts kind of getting worried. And at one point there was a projection of 82 gigawatts. Yeah. Low 80s. Yeah. Which I think would have been a winter record, right? So at one point, the projections were looking very tight. Right. So take us through the weekend. Yeah. So I mean, like leading into the weekend, particularly talking to other media outlets, I think I was actually traveling, but I was traveling back to Austin. I was coming from the north, so I was like joking. I was bringing the cold with me. So I was talking to other media outlets, like people were asking about how's the system going to hold up? We have projections of really high demand. How's the natural gas system going to hold up? Because we rely a lot on the natural gas system, especially during these winter events. How's that going to hold up? Because, you know, basically nothing held up as well as we would have wanted it to during Yuri. And you know, it's on people's minds like, what have we done? That was a question I got a lot. It's like, what have we done since Yuri? You know, and how am I like that result in kind of a better system? I mean, I think my main responses were, I think we've done a lot on the power plant side in terms of like winterizing the power plants, doing better inspections, you know, making sure that so a lot of times for these power plants, it's like, if they trip offline for like a freezing issue, it can be something that's mundane is like a piece of insulation on a water circulation pipe ripped, right? And then a windshield comes along, freezes the water and then, you know, stops the flow and then the plant has to go offline. And so it's not, you know, spectacular reasons, necessarily. But we, I think we've done a better job in terms of, you know, going after that. The piece that I was a little bit concerned on given some of the information coming out of S&P and I think Wood Mac going into the weekend was, what about freezoffs in the Permian for natural gas? Like how's that system going to hold up? Yeah, that was worrying. And there were a lot of questions from the media as far as what has changed since winter storm Yuri. And like the first part of that is absolutely the winterization efforts. I'm like, I think Texas deserves a lot of credit for how far it's gone since then. A lot of that was reactive, right? Like back in the 2021 legislative session. Right. But the other piece was all the generation that we've added since then. Right? Like, yeah, Governor Abbott was on Fox News talking about we've added 40 gigawatts of new generation since winter storm Yuri. And most of that has been solar and batteries, right? So like that was also the huge story over the weekend that shouldn't be overlooked. You know, you're talking to Wilmic Adams the other day, you know, talking about how batteries can help during these like situations, right? You know, one of the things that, you know, happened during that fateful kind of 15 minute window, like on February 15th for Yuri was, yeah, power plant tripping offline after power plant tripping offline after power plant tripping offline. And the frequency is declining. And then some of the other power plants are tripping offline because the frequency declines fast and all these other kinds of things. That was one of the things, you know, we had way more batteries on the system that can respond to that stuff so quickly now. And so they could really kind of step in if they were needed. And I mean, luckily they weren't in that respect to like a rest frequency decays in the system. The stop was getting into an emergency event, but we had a lot more what we went from just a couple hundred megawatts in Yuri to we have tens of thousands of megawatts now. That's a big difference. Yeah, that's huge. And they peaked around 8 a.m. Monday morning. Right. I think it was around seven gigawatts of discharge. Yeah. So what happened? So battery storage showed up when we needed it, right? They were waiting for those price signals. And then we got that generation for batteries that really needed. Like if you look back at the data, batteries are doing most of their plane kind of before and after solar, right? And in winter, the highest demand hour is kind of that, you know, right before the sun comes up, you know, they always say it's always coldest before the dawn or something like that. And that's what it is. Like it's the coldest outside before it starts warming back up. People are waking up generally getting ready to go about their day, you know, making breakfast, getting the kids ready for school, all this other kind of stuff, right? And so you're using more energy to do that. And in our system, that's kind of right before, you know, the 30 plus gigawatts of solar that are going to, you know, come on to the system later in that day. And batteries are just kind of like, you know, picking up that morning ramp, that kind of slack there. And then they hand it off to the solar as they did on Monday, you know, so prices were really high during that couple hours because it's tight. But that's what, you know, batteries are great at. And then the prices, you know, went way down. I mean, it was like, it was a pretty big swing. I mean, batteries, yeah, went from discharging, you know, thousands of megawatts to charging thousands of megawatts just in a couple hours, right? Because like we had so much extra energy on the system that, you know, prices were negative. And you know, we see that even in the summer, like batteries, you know, kind of play that morning ramp and then that kind of afternoon, you know, another thing is like we do use a lot of natural gas generation, particularly in the wintertime. You want to speak to some of the, you know, what were the expectations out in the Permian and kind of how did things like line up in terms of getting gas from, you know, where we produce it to, where we want to consume it. Yeah. And obviously the gas supply issues were a big concern back during winter storm. I think you can't really emphasize enough the role that batteries play. Like you really can't talk about it enough because you're right. Like we didn't have that technology at our disposal back during winter storm. You're and yeah, you can talk about it in the media. And I think that the media picked up on that. But to see it play out in real time on Monday morning was pretty spectacular as far as what you said. The grid was looking tight and the price differential as far as batteries really like flattening those prices during a really critical hour for Texas. Like that was huge. I think the other piece also Josh is like we had that podcast with Will McAdams and he spoke about how you could also look at batteries as a reliability tool that like utilities in Texas aren't allowed to just have batteries sitting around because then that would turn them into generators right and they can't the the T.D. using Texas are not allowed to dick their toes in generation. However, right. If you look at them as a reliability tool then like that's something that Texas should take a really close look at, right? Like because you would want to have these batteries sitting around as a reserve in case you need them. We didn't dip into single-digit temperatures last weekend. But what if we get right like what would that scenario look like right because then things would have been a lot dicier than they ended up being right. And we're still, you know, we're recording this podcast at the end of January. There's still plenty of time left this winter and we may very well see another winter storm before the winter is not here yet. Exactly. Yeah. So maybe do you think we have to look at alternatives like do we have to take kind of batteries towards more seriously and look at kind of even a bigger build out to try to prevent the next grid emergency? I mean, it depends on what service they're kind of playing, right? I mean, you talked about not the people who own the wires can't own the power plants, right? And that's been a separation of our of our market for market power issues and other types of things, right? There's one exception down in Presidio where like a battery was built because it was at the end of a very long transmission line that you know would go out from time to time and it was way way way way cheaper to build a battery than it was to like double up the line. And so there is some precedent for that. But in other parts of the system that are more, you know, connected, I mean, I mean, I do think we need to take a look at like how do those assets participate? Because batteries, they do kind of eat their own lunch, right? I mean, they buy low, they sell high when they're doing arbitrage. And so like there is like an optimal amount of, you know, saturation, I guess that we'd want to see. And so if we're going to use them for reliability assets, like we probably need to also be clear about how much, you know, can they play and kind of the energy market? That was another thing that, you know, every time we have one of these events, you get people posting images of like the Eirikat website or like, you know, good status data or whatever showing, oh, prices are really high in Eirikat right now. And it's like, yeah, that's a feature, not a bug of the system, right? Like if we're going to have an energy-only market, we have to let the prices go high from time to time. Now we don't want it to happen all the time, but you know, from time to time, that's what, you know, sends investment signals into our into our market. And so if we constantly suppress those over and over and over again, there would be less of an incentive like, you know, to build in our market. So I mean, I think we have to make sure that we keep that market signal out there, you know, just so that we can have the dynamic market that I think a lot of us like to play in. But Matt, part of the reason why like we didn't see some of those like high prices, it looked like demand by just didn't show up on Monday. Like, what was what's going on there? I think what I had seen is that first of all, the storm really didn't compare to winter storm Yuri, right? Like the temperatures didn't drop quite as much. The duration of the storm was shorter, right? So like a shorter storm, that's less extreme. Yeah. I think played a key role. And then like the school closures and folks working from home, like that's also a huge factor, right? Virtually no one in Texas was out on the road on Monday morning. Yeah, Texans on ice isn't a great show to watch. I saw a few episodes of it this past storm and then not great. Yeah, so that, I think that was definitely part of the reason why, you know, it didn't peak quite as much as Urquat was forecasting. And then the other piece, Josh's like we're about to release an episode with Kurt Heim from Dyken. And the whole resistance heating problem was really like on display over the weekend, right? Yeah. There's about 12 gigawatts of resistance heating on the grid right now in Texas, right? Ooh, that's a lot. Yeah. So to channel Doug Lewin here, if you wanted to solve the winter problem, you could pretty much just slice that peak demand by replacing all that resistance heating with heat pumps, right? Like that would be like a really easy fix to the winter crisis that we seem to be having every year now, right? Like it's not like a once every hundred-year storm if you're seeing it every single year, right? Yeah, I mean, there's something like 60% of heating in Texas is electric. Some of that's heat pump. Yeah, a lot of it is the electric resistance. And I think it's like, it's got the further south you get in the state, the higher percentage of electric resistance heating because it's so cheap, an electric coil that just like fits into the ducting system, you know, that may pull as much as like five homes worth of air conditioning. Yeah, one home consuming what five homes do in the summer for air conditioning, just for like heating during those times, because it is so cheap, right? And like you do the calculations on like, well, if I'm only going to use this a couple times a year, you know, what's the cost benefit of that? I mean, I think that's where like things like, you know, minimum efficiency standards and things like that can, you know, really kind of come in and help with that because like, if you already have an air conditioner, you can easily have a heat pump, right? I mean, it's just like it's basically the same machine. It's just running reverse, right? But did you see need some different valves? I mean, obviously, you can't take your existing air conditioner and turn it into a heat pump. That's you'd have to replace it, you know, but these machines break and as they're replaced, I really think it'd be good on the state to go for heat pumps because they're so much more efficient. Yeah, it's a drastic difference and the break even on a retrofit is like from one to two years, you're not looking 10, 15, 20 years down the line to recover the cost. And you're right about resistance heating being extremely cheap until a winter store comes and you have to pay the electric bill. A lot of folks are about to see those bills and it's unfortunate. Actually, that like so many Texans have to pay for the cost of resistance heating and not even knowing really what they signed up for because a lot of folks move into homes that already have resistance heating built in and you kind of just stuck with what you have, right? It's not a choice for a lot of people. Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of times when people who are installing these things are going after the cheapest thing, it's because it's a rental unit or other types of stuff like that. It's like they're not the ones paying the total cost of ownership as it were of these systems. And like you mentioned, the building codes, like the builders just can meet the minimum standard of what the building code says, right? So they're just trying to cross that bar and most of the time, you know, cross Texas, that's resistance heating. So that's how you end up with what we have now, which is if there are even codes, right? Exactly. In some parts. Right. Yeah. So that's an easy fix, right? Like you can solve the resistance heating problem. What else in your mind can we do to make winter boring again? To circle back to like the gas question just for reference, it was a big deal during winter stormy area. I think like for a day or two, like we lost about 85% of our, you know, production of natural gas like out in the Permian. And that's because in the Permian is what we call like a wet gas, right? So whenever we produce gas, there's also liquids that come up with that gas. And if those liquids hit a, you know, frozen steel wellhead, they can form an ice dam and stop the flow of gas. And because in Texas, we have a just in time natural gas delivery system, we're constantly producing it from wells, processing it, compressing it, putting it in pipelines and pulling it out of pipelines to use. Like if any part of that goes down, that can, you know, result in a lot of our, you know, generation, we get them 45% of our electricity, you know, an average of natural gas. And a lot of home heating, you know, the other 40% or so of that home heating is mostly natural gas, right? And so like, you know, going into this, you know, event, we kind of had that in our minds like, okay, how is the system going to hold? And it, it seems like there was, we lost about 11% of production or so. So it wasn't near as bad, but as has been noted, like, you know, it didn't get as cold, it didn't get as deep. If it had been as bad as Yuri, like, I'd be a lot more worried right now. But I mean, you know, as long as we're still reliance on natural gas, like, you know, during these events or like we need it there, I think it would be good on us to still be pushing for more information about the system, right? It is still so opaque. And particularly the interest state, the pipelines that never, that don't leave Texas, we just have so little information about how that system operates, you're relative to like the electricity that also stays within our state. It's always an open question how things are going to go. It, it seemed to, you know, not be as bad, you know, this time around. No, you saw too. Yeah. And I think the biggest misperception, maybe not with our audience here, because they're so fluent in energy. But, you know, when you talk to the media, energy is so politicized these days, like every other, you know, topic. So a lot of times it's just like one technology pitted against another. Sure. And generally speaking like folks, sometimes can buy that narrative and think that, you know, one energy is better than another. All of these different technologies work in tandem. And like we just have the best example of that during the winter storm, like solar peak debt, 25 gigawatts, wind peak debt, 18 gigawatts, batteries discharged, seven gigawatts during that critical hour. So, and natural gas also played its role. So it's like, it shows other states and other parts of the country that like Texas is actually building the, the roadmap of like how to build a diversified energy grid, right? Like that's in my mind, the biggest difference between 2026 and 2021. It's always important to think of it as like a system, right? Is, you know, everything has its role to play. And like, you know, we don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket, right? Because we've made that mistake before. Like if you go back to the 1970s, like we got a lot of our electricity from oil at that point in time. And then we had the twin energy crises of the of the 70s. The price just skyrocketed, right? So we're like, oh, we don't really want to be on oil anymore for both transportation and electricity, right? For all of our energy inputs. We've had issues where like, you know, we thought we were running out of natural gas and we're building natural gas import terminals. And then we figured out hydraulic fracturing. Now we're like exporting it to the rest of the world and all these other kinds of stuff. But then we saw during, you know, 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, the price of natural gas, you know, tripled and that, you know, put upward pressure like on the price of electricity. And renewables during that time played a critical role in acting as a hedge against the high prices that otherwise would have been looked at. I mean, some of my own, you know, researchers showed, you know, renewables to save tens of billions of dollars in electric wholesale costs, you know, since we really started building them in earnest. And I think plays such a good role now in keeping costs low. And then like paired with batteries like, I don't know about you, but like there's all this other stuff I was seeing come across like in the media. Well, more in social media, I guess, it seemed like people were already riding after action reports while the action was still going on. I don't know. Did you see any hot takes that turned out to, you know, not be so great? Yeah, first of all, there was one tweet. I think it was like the 9 p.m. hour pointing out there is no solar on the grid, you know, solar ghosted. Oh, shock of the sun went down. Yeah. Yeah, it really does point to like a lot of every single day man was shocking regularity, you know, I mean, just yeah, it is wild. And I hope we move past that like I really hope I genuinely hope we can just have grown up conversation about energy, right? And yeah, there's nothing better than a diversified grid and all of these technologies are exposed to extreme weather, right? Like there's no question that like we need to keep weatherizing and winterizing and diversifying. And that's what we're going to meet that needs at the grid moving forward and decentralizing because, you know, folks who are lucky enough to have backup power and batteries and their garage and generators and their backyard, like generally speaking, they're the ones who are going to make it through a winter storm, right? Because they've got a couple of extra cards in their pocket that they can play, right? So the question in my mind is like, how do you make those technologies more affordable for folks who can't currently have fun with them? Yeah, no, it's a great point. I've got family out at an East Texas. And and that was actually part of the state that did get hit with like the ice that like on the tree limbs and knocked down on the distribution network. The central part of the state like it had already gotten cold enough most of it fell asleep. It ended up being really icy road conditions and actually came across, you know, someone who'd run off the road and hit a power pole. So I mean, it was like which happens more than people think. But the eastern part of the state got kind of that classic winter Texas ice on, you know, trees and knocking them down. And I had family who were like, you know, out of power for multiple days, but they had backup, right? And so they were able to like have, you know, the energy that they needed during that time. And you know, to our point on things like act as a system and having a grown up conversation about this, I will use a very dumb metaphor how I've been talking about this. I've actually pitched this to many, many media outlets and no one has printed it. So I'll see if I'll get it past our editors. But like a lot of times you get these people talking about, oh, if like just all had coal or all had, you know, nuclear or whatever, like, you know, makes a whole bunch of power, you know, reliable and all this other kind of stuff. And it's like, yeah, but it's not always the case that like one thing is cheaper than two things. Think traditional thermal generation or whatever versus like, you know, renewables and storage or other types of stuff like that, right? It's not always the case that the one thing is always going to be cheaper than the two things. I mean, I think people in their head think, oh, one thing can do it all. That's got to be the cheapest way of doing it. And it's like, no, not necessarily the case. And here's the, here's a metaphor, right? I don't know if that's actually a metaphor. I'm not an English major as an engineer, but whatever. It's like sometimes two things can be cheaper than one. You could probably spend less money on a car and a boat than you would on a duck mobile, right? So a car can get you down the road, a boat can get you, you know, across the water. You could buy a duck mobile that will do both, but it's going to be more expensive and probably not do both of them great, right? I don't know if you've ever ridden in one of these things as it's like got on. It's like, it's not the most clumsy of ride or the best boat, you know, out there. So it's like, this is a concept of like, you know, two things can be cheaper than one sometime. And the diversity that you get with that can be super helpful. I mean, I, I did an analysis like after Yuri one time, it was like the summer after where we just looked at like, and for reference, like during Yuri, we had something like 300 megawatts a solar on the system or something like it was like nothing. And I looked at what if we had had 10,000 megawatts of solar like online during the system at this report for grid lab, you know, it wouldn't have like gotten us through like the entire event. It wouldn't have like taken care of all of the outages, but the amount of energy that it would have put on the system, I am pretty sure it would have allowed the outages to roll during that time. You know, during Yuri, if you had just lost power for like four hours here and there instead of four days, you know, I was one of them who did. That was a much different experience, right? Like, the power's on, you know, for, you know, get the kids down or whatever, warm the house back up, keep the fridge going, all this other kind of stuff. That's a much different experience than, you know, four days without power. That was one of the things like, since we don't have to rely on a fuel chain, you know, to get fuel to things like, you know, wind and, you know, solar, that's resilience, right? If you're not having to rely on these those two things, you can, you know, you just have, you know, fewer points of failure. I mean, I think that can be helpful. And now with batteries, it makes it even better. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I love that you're getting fired up about this, Josh. Like, we've got the Swiss Army knife right now. It's the Duck Mobile Man. It's the Duck Mobile. Yeah, the Duck Mobile. And like, my answer to folks who get really excited about nuclear or hydro or geothermal or fill in the blank, yes. Like, yes to all of that. Like, we need all those technologies to come to business in Texas. Like, we've got an open competitive market. So if you think that you can come make money here, then by all means, right? Like, that's what we're seeing. And that's like the single reason why when folks are like, well, why is Texas leading the country in renewables? Because it's our competitive free market. That's the answer. Like, no one in the Texas government decided one day that we need more solar and batteries. It just happened because this is a great place to do business. I do think that it's worth mentioning this. What happened over the weekend with DOE issuing a special order that we didn't touch on that. I think it's worth having a conversation because it's part of this like open question of SB6 and data centers and how ERCOT is going to treat large loads moving forward. And I want to get your take on that. And I also like, from my perspective, it still feels like residential customers don't have the same rights that large industrials do. And I think that's something that needs drastic change, right? And I think ERCOT's looking at a residential demand response program. But that's something that makes my blood boil when we're in the middle of a winter storm. And like normal Texans don't have the, I mean, they can certainly like turn down their thermostat, their thermostat a few degrees and they'll save money by doing that. But there's no like residential demand response program that gives them some financial incentive to do that, right? You know, one of the things around particularly that order and like, it seems like those come around as well. Like, you know, every time we get one of these winter storms, it's kind of one of those things like, you know, you're talking to folks who would have been impacted by it. They're kind of like, we have no idea like how this is actually going to happen, right? It's like, the order was about using backup generation at large loads to offset usage if we had gotten into, you know, energy emergency alert level three, right? And there's five levels that you go through before you get to EA three. And like, we never even got past the first one, right? We just never even got, you know, to that point. But there was a whole lot of confusion around, okay, like, you know, typically when ERCOT, like, ERCOT is dispatching power plants, right? They're turning them off, they're turning them on, they're doing the other kinds of things like ERCOT doesn't have control over backup generation at like large loads, right? And so it's like, are you just going to call someone on the phone and have them turn it on? Like, this is not, it's not the normal operations of kind of how this thing goes. There's a lot of uncertainty as to like, how this thing would have been implemented. What would have been done? It comes to the bigger point of during a crisis is not the best time to be making policy. If you want this to be a thing that we look at, we need to have a cool, collected calm conversation about how that's going to look outside of the sky might be following times, right? Because you're just not going to make the best decisions you're worried, cool heads might not prevail, like all these other other types of things. And to get to your point on like the residential side, yeah, it's like, we need to work on that program before we get into like emergency situations. I agree with you. I think we need it. People need the ability to do that to offer the resources that they have. But like, during an emergency is not the time to do that, right? It's like, we need to do that, you know, while we can think about it, you know, then be ready for whenever these emergencies come around. Completely agree. And this is not a criticism of Irka by any means because Pablo and the Irka leadership, I think, has done a great job at looking at new innovative solutions that they can bring to the table. They brought their residential demand response program to the table and tried to get it done before the winter season, right? Like, their goal was to get this in place before the winter time. And I think there wasn't enough agreement from stakeholders to make it happen. Like, I sincerely hope that it'll be in place by next winter. Yeah. There's a lot that needs to happen to get those kind of policies in place. But if you can, again, it's 12 gigawatts of resistance heating, right? So if you can crack that through, if you can even wipe five or six gigawatts off, right? You can solve half of the problem. And yeah, that will be huge progress for the state, right? And I think there's some steps you'd like to see in that. Like, what's the next step you'd like to see towards that? In my mind, in like, the resistance heating problem, I think you can solve it through market-based solutions. Like, I don't think Texas is ever going to be a state that mandates a technology like I think that you can bring in pumps through just smarter market design, right? Like, through building our homes and businesses in a smarter way. I also don't think it's more expensive necessarily than like traditional resistance heating, right? It's just for the most part, it's doing business as usual. Like, you said, these are just normal HVAC systems with reverse valves in them. So it's a question of like, can you convince the private sector that this is a smart business choice, right? And then on the residential demand response piece, it's like, I think the retail providers are absolutely interested. Like, why wouldn't you be if you're a rep doing business in Texas, you absolutely want the incentive to work with your customers and have the financial incentive to persuade your customers to turn that thermostat down a couple of degrees. And the oxidist during the summertime, like, you want to work with your customers through the opposite. Like, there are innovative retail providers out there that are already executing those programs, right? But the financial incentive is still pretty small. So like, the key piece here, when you talk to their retailers is how do you make it worthwhile for the customer to change their behavior? Right? That's what it all comes down to. I mean, if you give me 20 bucks a month, I might do it. But if you give me 100 or 200 a month, I will definitely be participating in that program, right? So there's a threshold that I think that people will feel comfortable giving up control of their thermostats or at the very least changing the way that they consume energy. Yeah. I would change my behavior for that too. That's not a small sum. And we've come a long way, Josh, as far as technology too, because in the summertime, like, you can pre-cool your home when energy prices are cheap. So you won't even notice the difference. Like, if you're out and you come back home at like 6, 7 pm on a hot summer day, that house will already be pre-cooled. So it's not even a comfort issue anymore, right? Like, you won't even notice the difference. Yeah. I think I had a smart thermostat one time. It was doing that kind of thing. And yeah, I mean, I think it was only one time my schedule was different, right? It was a little bit different. But most of the time, like, it had no impact on me personally, but it definitely was better for the grid and the, you know, the bill at the end of the month. Totally. Well, I guess it's time to wrap this up to any final messages of hope to try to get us through the rest of the wintertime. Yeah, I mean, you know, winter storm, you read that wasn't, but, you know, as we're recording this episode, it is not February yet. So it may get cold in Texas again. And if it does, I'm sure we and a lot of other folks will be talking about it. Keep those faucets dripping, right? Yeah, that's right. Keep the, yeah, open the cabinets. So I've got a, you know, a young child at home. So we just baby proof like the house and stuff. So we have like locks on the cabinets. So we're like, keep the cabinets open, but no, I have locks on them. I don't know. It's really hard for me to get the cabinets open. I think they're more, more Josh proof than they are like, you know, baby proof sometimes. So that was a bit of an issue in terms of trying to get the cabinets open. But we survived. We figured out we did not freeze. We made it. Yeah. Texans on ice. I love that. Sounds like the next production over at the Moody Center. Stay warm, everyone. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Sounds good. See y'all later. Thanks for listening to the Energy Capital podcast. If today's conversation helped you make better sense of how the energy system actually works, share the episode with a colleague and hit follow on your podcast app. You can find us on Apple podcast, Spotify, and all the usual platforms. For deeper analysis and context each week, subscribe to the Texas Energy Empower app. Texas Energy Empower.com. That's where we'll find every episode, every article, and our latest updates. We're also on LinkedIn, X, and YouTube, where we share clips, insights, and ongoing commentary on energy policy markets in the grid. Before we go, a quick note, the views expressed on this podcast are my own and do not represent the official positions of the University of Texas, ideas miss, Austin Energy, or Columbia University. A big thanks to Nate P.D. R. Producer. I'm Joshua Rhodes. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.